


Hidden Kisses & Damned Presumptions

by waldorph



Category: Peter Pan - Barrie
Genre: Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-01
Updated: 2008-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-02 19:37:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waldorph/pseuds/waldorph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are all grown up, the Great War is finally over, and Slightly knows who the hidden kiss in the corner of John's mouth belongs to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hidden Kisses & Damned Presumptions

John grew up to be a perfectly respectable young man.

He did not get a job in a bank, as his father had, but rather he made a career of studying the stars, searching the skies for something he perhaps felt he was missing.

His sister Wendy, of course, became the famous author, and his brother Michael left University and is now in Egypt, studying the pyramids.

But this story is not about Wendy, nor Michael.

It is about John.

"I sometimes thinK I shall never determine whether it is an asteroid or just a meteor," he confesses, most distraught though masking it in brandy as he stared at a chart.

"I don't really think it matters much," Slightly replies carelessly, sweeping hair back. John is the only one who calls him Slightly, even Wendy calls him James, but John remembers James Hook, and though James is a perfectly respectable name, John refuses to call him James.

"Yes, well, that just shows what you know," John sighs.

Slightly looks perfectly unbothered by this slight to his intellect, and takes John's apple.

For all Aunt Millicent's badgering, Slightly never quite turned respectable. He did join the army, and has made a career of it, though privately John is relatively certain that this is simply because Slightly never grew out of the phase where he liked to blow things up.

He supposes being indefinitely stuck in Neverland and constantly fighting pirates will alter a man's psyche, though Tootles, Curly, Nibbs and the twins adjusted well enough. Of course, Slightly had been second in command, and John had made the mistake of introducing the boys to the idea of Napoleon.

Of course Slightly had gone into the army. He'd just come out of it...slightly more Slightly and remarkably less like Aunt Millicent's "son." John still wasn't sure what to make of that.

"Yes, Jacobs, what can I do for you?" John inquires when the boy walks in. He glances nervously at Slightly, and John casts a quelling look upon the other man, who smiles a smile that is meant to look innocent but in truth is anything but.

"I don't understand, sir," Jacobs confesses. "Is there intelligent life out there?"

"There's no intelligent life here," Slightly replies, which John perceives to be the oldest and least imaginative answer to that question possible. Jacobs simply seems confused.

"Not to our knowledge. Perhaps you should consider being less fascinated by stories and more interested in your assignments," he suggests. Slightly looks entirely unimpressed, and John singularly ignores him.

"Yes sir, sorry."

"Are you always like that?" Slightly demands. John gives him a look over his glasses. "No, of course, you know best," Slightly hastens, which really means I've decided not to argue.

Which in turn signifies that Slightly isn't here simply to pester John on an off day, or just that this is another thing the war has done; regressed Slightly into that Lost Boy who assures the other person that everything is fine even though he personally believes otherwise.

Either way it makes John unnaturally concerned.

"What?" John demands, getting up and shutting the door with a click, his professor's robes swirling around him, hat forgotten on the desk, which now plays host to Slightly's feet. The fact that hazel eyes do not reach his, but rather skitter away like leaves blown on an autumn wind makes his chest constrict. He locks the door for good measure, and sits down in a chair, leaning forward intently.

Once upon a time (if by that one means 1902, which John does) they were children, with John aged 9, and Slightly was an interminable age (though they approximated he was 8). It is now 17 years later, and Slightly has survived the Great War, and John spent long years living from letter to letter. He had not understood why his heart should ache so. He had allowed himself to believe it was the pang of missing one who misses a brother, for Slightly was a cousin of sorts (though they both knew better).

For four long years John had listened to reports, and Slightly' letters he read so many times that it seems impossible that he had not read the words off of them.

It is now 1919, and Slightly has been home for four months, and he's scarred and weary, but alive and crackling with an energy that John has always associated with Neverland.

They're now 26, and 25.

Aunt Millicent has been sobbing over Slightly' lack of marriage for years now, ever since his 18th, and Mother and Father look on upon John with a concerned affection, uncertain how to broach such a delicate topic.

They spend more time in each other's company than naught these days. Slightly is the only one who will seek John out of his studies, and John is the only one who Slightly will tolerate when he is particularly lost in a battle already done. But there is a distance between them, neither quite comfortable, and Slightly is changed in a way that John, who has always fancied himself adult and English, finds discontenting.

"When I was very young, it was all so very romantic," Slightly says finally, as though he has finally conjured the words from the depths of his soul. "We had battles- do you remember them? They seem so very long ago, and we were so very young. Youth is a powerful thing."

"What do you mean?" John asks quietly, brow furrowing of its own accord.

"Fighting pirates," Slightly explains. "Do you know we never once thought we should die? It was a game, and had we lost, somehow the game would have begun again. I cannot tell you how many times we played it- I do not even remember how long I was there for. Peter controlled it all- all of the world seemed to revolve around him- I suppose it did.

"But this war- it was so horrible, John. So horrible, and so long, and to die is no adventure at all, it is respite. It is- we were so very young, and so very stupid."

"Surely we were just children," John protests.

"Do you remember Tigerlily?" Slightly asks.

"I-" John starts, and then pauses. It had been on the tip of his tongue to reply that of course he did, but he remembers only flashes of her. Brilliant paint, a smile, a handsome face, strength, his first kiss- the first time he ever felt like a man. He remembers the- "I remember the idea of her."

He has no idea why Slightly should inquire after that memory.

"You've not had another woman," Slightly says in that carefully controlled voice that means there is so much more, that John only has only to write the correct equation and he will unravel the mysteries of that voice. "Not since you were 9."

"Not true," John protests. "I knew a lovely girl-"

"You knew her, but you never _knew_ her," Slightly dismisses, his hazel eyes boring into John's.

"I am sorry my experience does not meet your expectations," John replies, stung and reeling back. This is it- that thing that they do not discuss, the emotion that slides beyond "brotherly" or even "very good chums" and into something that John knows enough to know that polite society- even impolite society- would never accept; something that they pretend is not there, except now, when Slightly is pressing the boundaries of their relationship.

"Come on. Dinner at your parents, lovely, the whole family will be there. All the small things," Slightly informs him abruptly, mischievous smile in place and suddenly he is exactly that boy whom John saw 17 years ago, who warned him that love was a thing to brace oneself for.

Slightly swings his feet off of the desk, pulls on his coat, and stands, cocking his brow. It is as though a light has been turned on, or Slightly has concluded something that John cannot follow. It unbalances him- he fancies himself clever, but Slightly has determined something that John is incapable of seeing.

"Quite," John agrees after a moment, thrown, collecting his own things. He thinks it most inconvenient that Slightly seems to be entirely in control of this...strange intercourse while he is so unbalanced.

They do not speak as they reach his parents house, but Slightly opens and holds the door for him, taking his coat and hanging it as he has ever since he got back. Wendy glances over, and John meets her puzzled gaze, watching as her husband removes her coat, and exchanges pleasantries with Slightly.

"Why is he hanging your coat?" she inquires, removing Jane's coat and straightening her little girl's hair. She then decides she doesn't care to hear the answer to her first question, because she quickly follows with, "How is he?"

"Seems the right sort," John replies, adjusting his sleeves and pushing his glasses up. It occurs to him how much like their father he has become.

"Do you remember when we first returned?" she asks. "How old he seemed to us then? That age appears to have returned, do you not think?"

John looks over, and Slightly is embracing Aunt Millicent, charming a smile out of her even as she fusses over his unkempt hair, his stubble. Slightly laughs quietly, and looks over at him, and John averts his eyes too quickly, and a blush crests his cheeks. He wishes he knew how to stop this.

Surely he is far too old to continue this way.

Wendy looks between him and Slightly, and then frowns. "John, what-"

"No," he says, answering her question far too late. "Not older. But I see what you mean, he is...different."

"Do you suppose-"

But she is cut off by the entrance of Michael, who laughs and is covered in freckles, married with four children at the tender age of 23. Mother holds him and presses kisses to all of them, and Father beams, and then all of the others- Robert (formerly Tootles), William and Benjamin (the twins), Geoffrey (formerly Nibs), and Victor (formerly Curly) are all tumbling in, wives and children on their arms, saying hello to Cousin James, and Slightly smiles, wrapping an arm around Geoffrey and charming wives.

For a while John is relieved, because Geoffrey planned the battles that Slightly fought, and that has always solidified a friendly, brotherly relationship between them. The proper sort of relationship- not whatever is going on between John and Slightly, and no, John will not be dwelling on _that_ particular thought, thank you.

They endure dinner, and Michael sends him a quizzical look. "Have you fallen out with James?" he asks in a low voice. John wonders desperately if the entire family expects he and Slightly to be constantly involved with each other.

"Don't be absurd," John replies, and rests his fork and knife on his plate. Rachel, his parents' maid, clears his it quietly, and when John looks up there is Slightly, frowning at him over his wine goblet. John hastily averts his eyes, feeling his cheeks begin to flush.

Of all of them, the war took so much, but it is Slightly and Slightly alone who was there the entire time, not planning the battles but conducting them, coming back time and again with only himself, and no explanation other than luck which seemed to be a curse more than a blessing. On a drunken night Slightly recalled running from a trench towards the enemy, and when the smoke cleared he found himself to be the only man left standing.

He had cried on John's shoulder and fallen asleep draped over John, but John pointedly does not remember that.

Geoffrey had been taken into the officers' club, and he who helped draw battles. Benjamin was a Reverend, and helped boys get through tough times- now he mostly performed wedding after wedding. Robert and William both are physicians, and they stayed in London, though Robert was on the way to the front lines before the treaties were signed. They're all so young, and this has taken so much from them.

"Ah-ah-ah," Michael is saying gleefully, caught up in the conversation that dominates the table. John tunes back in, and Michael continues, "No, you see it is a hidden kiss. Jane has one, don't you see it, just there?"

"She is far too young for a hidden kiss!" Wendy replies with some heat, though her eyes examine her daughter's face almost worriedly. Jane seems unmoved by the conversation, and far more interested in peas.

"I suppose you all have one," Slightly says, so casually. He's not casual at all, and John wonders desperately why he is the only one who seems to realize this.

"Only the girls," Michael scoffs.

"Oh, come now," Mother protests. "All of my children have one." She casts a smile over them, but it saddens as she looks at John. She regrets that he has not found the woman to whom the kiss belongs, when all of his siblings have found theirs (Wendy twice over). He wants to tell her not to trouble herself, that he is quite content to let that remain a treasure undiscovered, but he fears that would only break her heart.

John does not look up throughout dessert, though he has no need- he can feel Slightly's eyes on him. He heads to the nursery the first moment he gets, when they retire for stories and singing in the parlor.

"It's your party," he says when footsteps sound behind him, pushing his glasses up tiredly. It's not strictly true, but he feels that this party was thrown to bolster spirits and remind those without families of their own(read: John and Slightly) that their family loves them.

"Then I should be allowed to abandon it," Slightly replies, unconcerned as he closes the door behind him. John's heart beats rapidly against his chest, and he fears it should break out altogether. "You're avoiding me."

"Wendy wanted to know why you act as though you were my husband," John replies.

"Wendy's head is full of stories," Slightly responds, standing close enough that John can feel his body heat.

He turns, flushing in indignation on behalf of a beloved sister, but Slightly is smiling a sad, quiet smile, and words die on his lips.

"You are driving me mad, these past months," he says instead, and wishes dearly he did not sound so very fond.

"I am mad, these past months," Slightly replies. "I thought of you. Do you know what I wondered about?"

"No," John replies, not thrown by the non-sequitur but uncertain that he wants to know.

"I wondered," Slightly says, taking John's cheek in his hand and tilting his face so he can examine his lips, "whether or not that kiss might belong to me."

And then he is finding out, lips pressing against John's, dry and chapped, and then he pulls back with a slight frown, but he is amused, and John is simply poleaxed.

"Hm," he says, and then his tongue flick out to wet his lips, and John unconsciously mirrors the act, and this time when their lips press together everything feels...as perfectly marvelous as it may while being utterly wrong.

"We can't-"

"We'd just be cousins," Slightly breathes into John's mouth, tempting and seductive, "just cousins, living together. Nobody would suspect-"

"Except that-" but John cannot think of a reason, and brothers live together, and they share the same last name after all, and... Slightly tastes quite nice, actually.

Slightly leans in with a smile. "In any event, my things are already at your flat," he whispers, nuzzling John's neck, and John reaches back and grasps the bureau, arching for him. "So you're stuck with me."

"Damned presumptuous of you," John gasps.

"You're welcome."


End file.
